He was also an early college football player and coach, playing at the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1890s and then serving single seasons as head football coach at Nevada State University—now known as the University of Nevada, Reno—in 1900 and at his alma mater, California, in 1904.

[1] He attended schooling in Paris and later immigrated to the United States with his mother to California, where he completed his preliminary education.

[8] In 1907, he and his wife moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California where his good friend, George Sterling, had established "Bohemia-by-the Sea".

There he rented a cottage on Dolores and 9th Avenue, by the beach where he published stories that he hoped to sell to magazines.

The house burned down in 1924 and he rebuilt it on the same site with thermotite cement blocks, a locally produced fireproof building material.

[7][9][10] In Carmel many of his close associates were friends from his encounters at Coppa's “bohemian” restaurant in San Francisco, including: Harry Leon Wilson, Xavier Martinez, Arnold Genthe, painter Francis McComas and his wife Gene as well as Perry Newberry, Mary Hunter Austin, and Sinclair Lewis.

In April 1907, London was aboard his boat, the Snark, when he held the sleeve of a football sweater with his wife Charmian, and Hopper.

London hoisted his old friend's jersey up the mast and flew it like a flag as the Snark sailed past the Golden Gate and out of San Francisco Bay.

[14] When he left Carmel he returned to Oakland to write stories of his Philippine adventures for Sunset and other magazines.